prasannascolumn

I always wonder Why does social friction in one region lead to a bloodbath, while the same friction in another region leads to a policy debate? We often looks at grievances, but grievance alone is a poor predictor of violence. To understand why societies break or bend, we must analyze the interaction of five variables: History (A), Personal Experience (B), Personal Ambition (C), Commonality (D), and Legitimacy/Leadership (L). In this framework, Commonality (D) acts as the "Social Brake," while Legitimacy (L) acts as the "Accelerator" that turns hate into a systemic institution. The Five Drivers of Systemic Violence A. History: The Narrative Justification History provides the "Long View" of conflict. It is the macro-narrative of ancient wrongs, conquests, or migrations. It answers the question: "Who started this?" In the North, it is often the Partition; in the South, it is the Aryan-Dravidian migration narrative. B. Personal Experience: The Emoti...

 I always felt my memory is not strong enough. Though i read enough, i dont remember much. During one of the morning meditations, i ruminated about the books i remember and which impacted. Here is the list and interestingly most of it, i read it between 1998 and 2002, when i was in college.  a. Zen and the art of ..... this book hooked me for days. I read and re-read it. i was reading will durant during this time, i felt i understood a little better of Kant reading this. What i remember now is the difference between car and motorbike ride, his discussion with a monk. The one shift was the way i looked at material things. Perhaps this led my buy bullet. Though i am not a great rider b. Freedom at midnight, Naokhali yatra. This led to read Gandhi's autobiography and more biographies, judith brown, fisher, last 200 days, etc: .  I vividly remember reading his autobiography. I was crying, couldnt even cost 60 pages. i have read almost all the biographies i think. c. Futu...

Yes there will always be a castiest, sexist, racist, linguist, religious angle to a murder. And we all cry for certain type of murder, and for certain kind of people. And we also choose to hear certain type. when i read Y G mahendran post,  he may be right, there is a difference between the murder of a dalit and murder of a brahmin. There will be and should be more voice for dalits, because of sheer number of dalits who gets killed. Very rarely do we see a brahmin killed because of his or her identity.

We are witnessing increasing outrage and drama in the streets everyday, not a day has gone without an incident that threatens to barrage our moral sensibility and delude us into thinking that some catastrophe is upon us and the indian voters are to be blamed for it. People who have voted for Modi is ridiculed and asked to repent for their mistake. The success of this government is to make every voter, every hindu (good bad and ugly) answerable for the government performance. One doesn't have to hold a party card to be a BJP man. No other government probably ever mired with controversies after controversies since it assumed office. The street warriors fighting the modi govt have been the left intellectuals. Both the real and exaggerated crimes and mistakes of the present government is used by the left to feel vindicated and call the “31” percent for introspection. One can actually feel a smirk in their face. Infact one gets a feeling that the left actually want the prese...

In the three day closed conference held by the sangh parivar to decide on hindu practices for the 21 st century India, VHP declared eating cow as integral part of Hindu society. In a statement by Parveen, he said Hindus were eating cow till 11 th century AD, it was during the time of muslim rule that hindus were denied beef.Muslims who came from the land where there were no cows, realized the strength of hindus coming from eating cows, conspired with the Buddhists to stop hindus from eating it. The gullible hindus fell for it.   Praveen said, VHP would launch nation wide Gau wapsi programme to encourage Hindus to return to their mother food. Various Leaders reaction: Arjunan of Hindu Cow katchi, welcomed the decision, and said hindus have always killed and ate things they loved most after offering it to their god, the cow is the most revered animals for the hindus, and it is natural for them to offer it as a sacrifice and eat it. Ram gopal another leader from the sa...

When i was a school kid, there used to be a joke about a student who wrote an essay about coconut tree. In the exam he was asked to write about a Cow, but  he knew only about coconut tree so he wrote three full pages about the tree and in the last line he wrote, “we tie our beloved cow in the coconut tree”. This is certainly on a lighter note, i am not suggesting roy doesn’t know about ambedkar, it is just a feeling you get after reading the introduction, you get to know more about Gandhi than about Ambetkar. From the article Roy has written (Doctor and the Saint), i feel she is fighting an imaginary gandhians whom she feels are betraying Ambetkar’s critical role in the history of India especially in creating modern moral intellectual conscience  of the nation. Why is nation obsessed with Gandhi when the future of india lies with Ambetkar seems to me her anguish. And for this she has brooded over writings of Gandhi (From the devils mouth) to prove his undeserved claims. Sh...